Making It Easy
by frazzledsoul
Summary: Robin's relationship with Ted starts to unravel and she ponders how her past relationships have led her to this point. Post-finale but intended as a fix-it for the ending that we were given.
1. Chapter 1

_Like most fanfiction adventures, this came on me with little to no warning. So I apologize for the (lack of) quality that may be reflected in the story below._

_I've long had a difficult relationship with the finale to this show. I defended it for a very long time, and I still continue to believe that most of the show's fans would have had a far easier time accepting it if all of the plot twists that were revealed in the show's final hour were introduced to us slowly instead of just throwing it in our faces for shock effect at the last minute. However, much like the other fandom I write (a lot of) fanfiction for, that finale undercut the show we thought we were watching and gave almost all of the characters the future that they least wanted._

_I haven't been able to watch the show since it left the air. It's just too painful knowing what eventually happens to Ted's wife and Barney and Robin's relationship. So if the characters don't sound exactly like you remember them, it's because I haven't gotten close to the source material for a very long time._

_That said, if you are at all interested in what I've put forth here please feel free to leave a review._

Ted and Robin's seemingly long-awaited reconciliation lasted just short of six months.

Five months, three weeks, and two days, to be exact. Not that anyone was counting, least of all Robin.

It had started off buoyantly and joyfully, full of all of the hope and vitality that a new relationship typically brings. Robin had thought she was long past this sort of thing, to the extent that she even acknowledged that she still wanted to awaken those feelings in herself. She'd buried that kernel of hope that she could revisit this long-ago dalliance of her youth a long, long time ago. Time moved on, her friends were happy, and she had gotten to live the life that she wanted, hadn't she?

She could wallow in selfishness and loneliness while everyone else seemed settled with families and children, or she could move on and have the courage to be happy. She chose the latter.

Still, in isolated moments, she wondered. Maybe it was an idle curiosity. Maybe it was a fantasy she clung to when she was reminded of all the things that she could have had. However, she couldn't lie and say the thought never occurred to her.

She thought about Barney, too, but that was different. They had tried and failed. The bitterness of that failure was long behind her, and Barney had found contentment in his own particular favor of family life. She knew that she hadn't been capable of giving that happiness to him. Somehow that knowledge made it easier for her to be in his life, for them to be bros again, for her to be the carefree aunt to his daughter that she was to Lily and Marshall and Ted's kids. It hadn't been what either of them had once wanted, but she treasured it nonetheless.

The prospect of this new relationship with Ted presented something different to her – something that brought the energy and newness of youth, but without being weighed down by the dread of the day when their paths would diverge. They had both accomplished what they had wanted in life and had changed enough to find a way to be together again. Or at least that's what they hoped.

The problem was that they hadn't changed as much as either of them had thought.

Ted was firmly enmeshed in family life in Westchester. He was also firmly enmeshed in clinging to Tracy's memory, even though he likely would have denied it if Robin had ever asked. Robin continued to live in Manhattan and visit Ted on weekends, but scheduling and logistical difficulties often made their relationship seem incredibly taxing even in its better moments. Penny and Luke's changing attitude towards Robin didn't help matters. They had adored and cherished her when she was the hip, slightly reckless aunt ready to introduce them to new adventures. However, her role as their potential new stepmother seemed to slowly breed a resentment in both of them, especially since Ted constantly expected her to back him up as they continued to test his boundaries.

Then there were the _feelings_ that she expected herself to have. Robin had always had trouble summing up that romantic ache that she felt came so easily to other people, most of all Ted. She wasn't built like that, and when those feelings did arise in her, they were almost always unexpected. She waited and waited and . . . they just didn't happen this time. She was finding it increasingly difficult to compensate for their absence with the other positive aspects of this relationship that simply didn't exist.

She knew that both of them deserved a clean break, but she couldn't bring herself to do it yet.


	2. Chapter 2

"It's not working," Robin confessed to Barney one sultry summer afternoon, having exorcised some of her relationship anguish in a strenuous impromptu baseball game with Barney, Ellie, and two of her friends. Such blatantly athletic activities might one have seemed grossly out of character for both of them, but parenthood (and the resumption of their friendship after Ted's wedding) had forced drastic changes in them that have proved to be extremely beneficial. Their romantic relationship might have crashed and burned, but their understanding of each other had only increased with time once the shock of the divorce had worn off.

Still, Robin thought she'd be crossing another one of those invisible relationship lines with that comment, and felt a desire to bite back her words the minute they had escaped her mouth. Ted had specifically sought Barney's blessing before he asked her out again, and he'd actually been very supportive. They had been nothing more than friends for eleven years, and they were both grateful for the constancy of that after so many years of ups and downs.

But those old wounds and passions still existed, even if they were hidden by memory and the ravages of time. Robin remembered those first few years after the divorce too well. She'd been consumed by bitterness and an ambition she hadn't let herself enjoy while Barney drowned into self-destruction. They'd chosen paths completely away from each other, and taken things to miserable extremes. It had taken a long time to fight back to being in each other lives, and she didn't want to mess it up again.

However, her worries seemed to be unfounded at this point in time. Barney seemed remarkably unfazed by her comments.

He nonchalantly took another sip of water from his water bottle, his eye trained on Ellie a few feet away from them. "I'm not surprised," he told her.

"Is that a crack at my relationship history?" Robin asked him, feeling annoyed. "Your track record over the past decade and a half hasn't been too stellar, either."

Barney turned to gaze at her, looking uncharacteristically serious for the time being. "Are you seriously telling me that you actually wanted to move to Westchester? Or that Ted was going to ditch that nice suburban set-up and move here?" He shook his head. "Not happening."

"It's not just about the _commute_," Robin insisted.

"Then what else is wrong?" Barney asked.

"Ted's still in love with Tracy," Robin said softly. "It's not going away – it's this impossible ideal that no one can live up to. And I'm expected to fulfill this role for Penny and Luke, and Ted expects me to back him up on it, and it's really not working, it's awkward, and they're starting to resent me, and it's making all of us miserable. And that might be worth it if the feelings were there, but – "

"– They're not," Barney correctly surmised.

Robin turned to look at him. "I'm sorry, Barney. You have got to be the last person who wants to hear this."

Barney sighed. "Do you think the feelings are there for him?"

Robin looked off into the distance, at the groups of happy, carefree couple and children surrounding them. She felt as far removed from them as humanly possible, and for the millionth time in the past few months she was wondering why she thought this relationship was a good idea in the first place. "I don't know," she said honestly. "I don't think so."

She paused a moment, stealing a look at Barney. He remained silent.

"Before Ted met Tracy, and he was lonely or confused or miserable, he would always think back on me and become convinced that our relationship not working out was what caused all of his problems," Robin said. She looked down at her hands. "I did the same thing, too. Especially when I was lonely and thought that my only other chance of having things work out was gone. But I think that's all it is for is for both of us – a fantasy. It's not real. It's not going to make everything else go away."

Her eyes met Barney's again, and she felt her guilt slowly melt into anger as he cocked his head to the right.

He knew. All this time, he knew. The stupid bastard.

"If you say 'I told you so,' I am going to drop kick you five boroughs over," Robin told him. "Ellie can look for you this time. I'm not helping."

Barney held up his hands. 'I didn't say anything," he protested mildly, sounding like he wanted to collapse in peals of laughter.

"You should have," Robin retorted.

"Look, Robin, I'm not one to speak with any sort of authority on this kind of thing. Our marriage went bust, after all. Mostly because of me. There's never really been anyone for me after that. Ellie's the only relationship I've ever had that's lasted. But this thing, with you and Ted – "he shrugged. "I didn't think it would last. For all the reasons you've stated."

"You could have told me," Robin admonished him.

"You were happy," Barney argued. "You're still my bro, Robin. Both you and Ted. I wasn't going to mess with that, even if it just lasted for a few weeks."

Robin sighed. "Well, I guess this isn't going to be as painful as I feared," she stated. She turned to look at him. "At least you've managed one lasting relationship. I'm still zero for nothing."

Barney didn't reply to that, and Robin thought she really had gone too far this time.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," Barney said gently. "I still believe what I said when we split up, Robin. Our marriage was successful, even if it ended after three years."

Robin shot him a wry smile. "I know," she said.

They lapsed into somber silence, their eyes rooted to Ellie tossing around a beach ball in the distance.

"Do you wish we had tried harder?" Robin asked after a few moments.

"I do," Barney says immediately. There's a sadness and a regret in his voice that Robin has only heard a handful of times, and she knows she'd just unearthed one of those wounds that they try their best to keep buried. "But maybe it wouldn't have worked out anyway. Maybe we would have made each other even more miserable, and wouldn't be talking to each other right now. And I wouldn't have you, and I wouldn't have Ellie." He left out a frustrated huff of breath. "That sounds very much like an awesome-less existence."

Robin felt a giggle escape from her throat, feeling the seriousness of the conversation start to transform into levity once more. Barney typically had that effect on people.

It was better not to think of those old hurts more than she had to. She had no answer to how to heal them, even after all of this time.

"It's better that you don't have to suffer through that, then," she told him.


	3. Chapter 3

The break-up actually went far more smoothly than she expected.

Ted half-heartedly pleaded for a second chance for a few moments, but the defeat was already apparent on his face. He had known before she did.

He still looked more dejected than she would have felt possible.

"I wanted this to work," Robin told him. "I wanted it to be like it was when we were younger, to just have those feelings and have all of the other complications not matter anymore. But it just isn't possible."

"I know," Ted told her. "I wanted that, too. I just kept telling myself that if I just kept on trying, one more day, one more weekend with the kids, eventually I'd look at you and I'd feel it again – "

Robin knew that he wasn't referring to his feelings for her.

"I can't compete with your wife," she told Ted. "Even if I wanted to share this suburban, parenting- teenagers, going-to-school-functions life with you, I wouldn't be able to do it the way she could. I can't live up to her."

"That isn't what this is about," Ted insisted. "I'm not asking you to do that."

"You're still in love with her," Robin maintained. "I'm not angry at you for it, Ted. I wish I knew what it was like to love someone the way that you loved her and make it all feel easy."

"It wasn't easy," Ted said with a grimace. "I spent half of our marriage just hoping there was some way she'd beat the odds, that I'd be able to keep her here. And then she died anyway. You think that was easy?"

"I know it wasn't," Robin said, feeling like she had gotten all of this horribly wrong. Again.

"Look, when she first died, it was like this constant, searing, pain in my chest," Ted continued, seemingly oblivious to her. "Eventually it dampened down to this constant, dull ache. And I was glad for that, you know? As long as that existed, I knew that she was still with me. But eventually enough time passed that it got fainter and fainter, and one day I realized that it didn't hurt anymore. That I had gone an entire week, two weeks, three weeks without feeling any of that. And I thought about you, Robin, you, the only other relationship of my life that felt unfinished, and I thought that maybe it could work again. I started to feel hopeful about it. That made me feel even worse."

Robin remained dumbstruck as he continued to ramble on.

"So, I sit the kids down and tell them the entire story of our relationship, from me meeting you at McLaren's to your wedding with Barney and finally meeting their mother at the train station. I guess I wanted to prove to them that I still loved their mother, that getting to this point where it didn't hurt anymore didn't mean that I was betraying her. They just – "

Ted sighed wearily. "They said I was in love with you and I should just ask you out. I kept thinking, maybe the reason I'm thinking of all of this means something, maybe it will be the key to not feeling guilty for not feeling awful about losing my wife anymore. I just couldn't make myself feel it."

Robin felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, like she was the focal point of some ridiculous farce, that she was an idiot for forcing an outcome that had been predestined all along. She had no idea what to say next. How could she react to the claim that the reason for their entire relationship had been because Ted felt guilty over losing his grief? How did you even respond to something like that?

"I should have told you all of this months ago," Ted continued. "I let it go on too far. I let it affect my children in a bad way. I never should have done that. It was just – "he let out a deep huff of breath. "I squandered my time with Tracy. I don't know why we waited seven years to get married. I thought if I just sped things up with you that I could outrun fate this time. That I could skip all the other stuff and get that happy ending again. Or at least something that looked like it." He shook his head. "I was wrong."

Robin remained silent for a few moments, allowing his words to sink in.

"I was wrong, too," she told him when the air around them had thickened a little less for him to be able to hear her. "Look, Ted – I've had the same temptation as you. Even before you met Tracy, when I was getting ready to get married to Barney and I felt anxious about it not being quite what I wanted, I would always go back to thinking about our relationship, all those what ifs."

"It wasn't a new thing for me, either" Ted admitted. "When you were with him and I was alone – "he sighed. "It was always this perfect dream in my head, imagining that all of the other stuff went away."

"I had the same feeling when you were with Tracy, those first few awful years after the divorce," Robin said. "You had that perfect dream for yourself, Ted, with the person who was actually right for you, and I was so jealous. I think it was only when we were weak, when we were at our worst moments, that we looked back at our relationship and saw it for what it wasn't. But it didn't change anything about us. It didn't mean we should have gotten back together."

Ted sighed. "You're right," he told her. "I know you're right."

"I think you may be ready to move on," Robin said gently. "I don't think you need to feel guilty for not grieving her so badly, Ted. Tracy would want you to move on, to be happy again. You just need someone who's actually stepmother material."

"She told me this herself, you know," Ted said, smiling shyly. "I wasn't ready to hear it."

"Well, I've always been more forceful than she was," Robin told him, feeling some of the old self-confidence start to make its way back to her voice. It had been so long since she felt any of that. At least in this area of her life. "And as your friend, I think it will be good for you."

"Friends, huh?" Ted replied.

Robin reached out for his hand. "Always."


	4. Chapter 4

Summer moved into fall, and Ted and Robin's dalliance slowly started to seem like an ill-advised dream.

He and Robin still met for occasional nights out or weekend barbecues with the kids, and she felt Luke and Penny slowly start to trust her again. She became hip, adventurous Aunt Robin again, the foil to their father's good intentions, and the role fit her as easily as it had before. Ted started dating a single mom he met at one of Penny's school plays – a widow with a daughter a year older than Penny, who was in a unique position to understand exactly what he had gone through – and Robin could see him start to smile and laugh again, like he had so many years ago.

In the meantime, she and Barney drifted into their old patterns almost overnight.

Long afternoons turned into lazy nights at his apartment, and eventually the long gazes and resurfaced feelings led to their inevitable conclusion. There were no morning-after regrets, no grand relationship discussion. They'd been through too many of those difficulties, both with each other and with other people, and they were too old and jaded for any of it.

They continued to sleep together, to spend time with each other, to enjoy the days lapsing into the next. Ellie got more and more used to her constant presence, and Robin slowly realized how much easier it was to be Barney's undefined girlfriend than it had been for Ted. There were no expectations pushed on her, because she wasn't the parent. Barney was. He understood that she didn't want to be a stepmother, and he didn't see any reason to force her to be included in the decisions he had been making with Ellie's mother for a decade on their own.

It wasn't wrought with tension and obligation, the way her previous relationships with Barney and Ted had been. They gave each other space to be independent and met on their own terms with the goal of merely sharing each other's company. For this first time in decades, Robin felt like she was in a relationship where the effort needed was the easy part. She and Barney were giving to each other what they wanted to give, and didn't see the need to make themselves into the people that their friends were.

The years had softened the pain over their previous break-up, and Robin was able to recognize now that they'd retreated into bad patterns mostly out of the pain of their failed relationship. Barney had gone back to his womanizing ways because he didn't have it in him to try anything else anymore, and she had isolated herself from her friends, allowing herself to be convinced that Barney had failed her and that she'd missed her only other true chance to be happy. It wasn't until Ted had married Tracy and she started spending time with her old friends that she realized that the happiness of her friends didn't have to come at the expense of her own. Barney had found contentment and maturity in someone that wasn't her, and she didn't resent him for it. His entire happiness didn't have to revolve on her, and her happiness wasn't contingent on any one person, either. She had a fully, happy life doing exactly what she wanted to do in life, and she started to allow herself to enjoy it.

Maybe that had been the real problem so many years ago. They had felt they needed to fit the relationship mold that was suited to Ted and Tracy or Lily and Marshall. They hadn't realized that in order for their relationship to work they needed to carve out a space to be independent next to their relationship as a couple. It had been a mistake to expect Barney to be subsumed into her adventures without allowing him to have any of his own, and instead of realizing that they had allowed things to deteriorate until parting seemed like the only solution. They could be committed and yet be apart when they needed it without turning the situation into a test for each other's affections. Forcing their bond into a marriage hadn't worked, but being together merely because they wanted to be did.

They didn't need to be the same as their lame married (or almost-married friends). They needed to be them.

Robin said yes. They kept two of her dogs and distributed the remaining three between their friends. She settled into happily cohabited life with her ex-husband, content to have the space to be alone and to also be with him, to share his life with his daughter without expecting to be something that she wasn't.

It had taken over twenty years, but Robin and Barney had finally found the way to happiness together.

This time, even the difficult parts seemed easy.


End file.
